It’s with slumped shoulders and puffy eyes (not shown in this picture) that I say good-bye to this blog and Speech Tech. I’m going on to a new job in the city, and tomorrow’s my last day. I have so enjoyed working here; especially with David, our editorial director, and Information Today’s amazing IT team (shout-outs to Bill Spence and J.D. Thomas!) on starting this blog. It was a hope of mine that the speech technology field would get another place to read more about the industry, and hopefully laugh a few times in the process. Ryan and I have tried to provide unbiased, up-to-date stories about developments within the speech tech field - I just hope our readers think we’ve done a good job.

Whether it was 3G phones or synthesized speech for RPGs, I had a great time writing on here with such an awesome guy (that’s you, Ryan!). I’ll miss our readers and everyone within the industry. You helped me along at the beginning when I didn’t know the difference between TTS and ASR, and had no clue what VoiceXML meant. I’ve watched the magazine grow and change, and feel like I know way more about IVRs than any 23-year-old should. I’ll keep you all in mind when I have a great contact center experience,  or I’ll Get all Human when I find myself slamming the zero button.

Special thanks to Susan Hura, Melanie Polkosky, and Nancy Jamison (yay for women in speech tech!) for helping me learn about VUI, human factors, and other speech technologies, and doing it with a smile; James Larson for always giving us insight into nearly EVERY speech tech industry development; and the lovely people at SpeechCycle, Angel.com, CallMiner, Nuance, Aspect, Nexidia, Datamonitor, Gartner, Forrester, and Verint for always being so willing to set up last-minute interviews.  And, of course, every busy and tired analyst, consultant, and marketing director who ever provided me with a few choice soundbytes for a news story, feature, or blog post. Our managing editor, Len Klie, and astoundingly talented art director Laura Hegyi already know how I feel about them — I’ll miss you guys. And, of course, not seeing my best friend Ryan Joe in the office is a harsh, sad reality.

See you around :]

- Lauren